What were the tools and techniques they used to get stuff done? How did they build canoes, make rope and clothes, and preserve food?
This article shows methods for measuring heights and distances as described by Owen’s Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1754), a book in the expedition’s traveling library.
Making Leather
by Joseph A. Mussulman
“The men of the garison are still busily employed in dessing Elk’s skins for cloathing.” Regrettably, Lewis was compelled to add that “they find great difficulty for the want of branes [brains].”
None of their tons of supplies, not even the guns, powder, and bullets with which they fed themselves, were ultimately as important as the pens, ink, and paper they carried, and protected from the elements.
Profile Portraiture
by Joseph A. Mussulman
In 1802 the British-born Philadelphian, John Isaac Hawkins (1772-1805)5, invented a new kind of copy machine, a pantograph with which a person could produce a miniature copy of his or her profile through direct contact. He called it a physiognotrace.
In a purely physical sense, the expedition was held together by rope. Rope for handling the barge, the pirogues and the canoes. Rope to secure sails and anchors, and for towing. Rope for fastening packages, assembling tents, and controlling horses.
In 1798 a German actor-playwright-turned-printer named Alois Senefelder (1771-1834) discovered the principle of lithography, relying upon simple chemical principles—the mutual repulsion of oil and water, and the mutual attraction of water and salt.
In May of 1803, Lewis bought four “tin horns”—elsewhere called “Tin blowing Trumpets” or, by Sgt. Ordway, “Sounden [Sounding] horns.” They were likely used a signals between boats and on several occasions a horn was used to call in lost hunters.
In 1806, Noah Webster defined the noun yoke as “a bandage on the neck, chain, bond, bondage, mark of servitude, couple, pair.” The word yoke can also denote a type of wooden device to harness animals that have been bred and trained to pull heavy loads.
Salt served functions that were equally as important as dietary needs: drying meat—namely, and tanning hides for clothing and moccasins.
Weaponry
Tools of survival
The guns and various military accouterments carried by the expedition members needed to do more than deter attacks and provide food, they needed to impress the Native Americans with whom American weapons could be a primary item of trade.
The Cooper’s Howel
From the early 15th to the end of the 19th century a cooper was a skilled craftsman who made casks or barrels of various descriptions. The word cooper originated in an old Dutch expression meaning cask.
While in Philadelphia in the summer of 1803, Lewis clearly had foreseen the rigors of weather which would be encountered on a planned two year “campaign.” He carefully provided, as any military commander would, for appropriate protection for his soldiers.
Thermometers and Temperatures
by Robert R. Hunt
President Jefferson held a long-term interest in climate and thermometers and recording climate data was included in his instructions to Lewis. Where Lewis obtained his thermometers and why the temperature on so many days days went unrecorded remains a mystery.
Cooking on the Trail
What they ate and how they cooked it—from drying meat to making biscuits. Several pages include recipes.
Dyes and Shellac
by Joseph A. Mussulman
A brief account of the dyes and shellacs used at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Hunting and Fishing
Although hunting and fishing were often considered a ‘gentleman’s sport’ especially in Europe, hunting and fishing for Native Americans and Americans alike were a matter of survival. The success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition depended on the success of its hunters.
The use of a lever as a tool for measuring weight in terms of current standards of weights and measures may be at least as old as labor and commerce. It embodies a classic proposition in elementary mechanics.
Lewis’s remarks about the comparative suitability of the three horizons used to observe stars—one using water and two with mirrors—are analyzed and illustrated by Robert N. Bergantino.
It was Thomas Jefferson who gave cryptography in America its greatest impetus. Sometime in 1803 Jefferson presented Meriwether Lewis with a cipher based on a square table or tableau used to create a substitution cipher.
Lead Powder Kegs
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis ordered 52 lead canisters specially made to carry and protect the expedition’s gunpowder.
Lewis’s Branding Iron
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis may have had this branding iron custom-made before he left the East, perhaps at Harpers Ferry, although there is no mention of it in existing records. Such tools commonly were used for marking wooden packing crates and barrels, and on leather bags, until the early 20th century.
Celestial Reckoning
by John Logan Allen
Thomas Jefferson was as interested in the methods and equipment for “ascertaining by celestial observation the geography of the country” as with any other single aspect of the Expedition. As faithfully as they could, the captains complied with the President’s wishes.
Lewis writes: “the bier in which the woman carrys her child and all it’s cloaths wer swept away as they lay at her feet she having time only to grasp her child.” This bier, then, is a bar or net serving to keep mosquitos from one’s personal blood supply.
The printing of pictures employed a 350-year-old technology based on a process called intaglio—from an Italian word meaning to “cut in”—in which lines and dots were incised into a metal sheet called a plate.
Caching Supplies
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis records the method for hiding and storing goods, which he learned from the French members of the Corps.
Making Candles
by Kristopher K. Townsend
Early in 1806 while wintering at Fort Clatsop, the last candles burned down, and Lewis described how they would make new candles out of tallow rendered from elk fat. This is the process.
How did the Indians, expedition cooks, and the hunters make fire? Several methods were used.
Bench Planes
A bench plane is a chisel locked into a holder or “stock” of a hard wood such as beech. There are six planes in a joiner’s basic kit.
This device was typically used for measuring the speed of a vessel at sea, but it could also be used to measure the velocity of a river’s current. It consisted of four parts: a log-ship, or log-chip; a specially calibrated log-line; a reel to hold the log-line; and a log-glass, or sand-glass.
![](/media/salt-works-rh-3545-sq.jpg")
On 28 December 1805, the officers detailed three enlisted men to proceed to the Ocean and “at Some Convenient place form a Camp and Commence makeing Salt with 5 of the largest Kittles . . . .”
Experience the Lewis and Clark Trail
The Lewis and Clark Trail Experience—our sister site at lewisandclark.travel—connects the world to people and places on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
Discover More
- The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.
This site is provided as a public service by the
Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance
with cooperation and funding from the following organizations:
- Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail
- Montana Committee for the Humanities
- Idaho Governor's Lewis and Clark Trail Committee
- The Capital Gallery (Lewis and Clark Fort Mandan Foundation)
- Yellowstone Public Radio
Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).